Everybody loves stories, facts mixed in with dangerous interpretive tinctures. But today is a day of no comment, of comet-less commas, of post-somatic traumas which embalm us with twisted tatoos of Sarah Palin’s soft-from-unemployment-yet-ready-for-stigmata palms.

What a wicked few days its been among the commentariat — probably the only thing really worth reading stems from Alabama, and the mind of one Qiang Zhai. Nothing has been more central to me of late than this idea == that of continuity of U.S.-China relations stemming primarily from the 1950s. The notion of “peaceful evolution” into a dissolved revolution seems contemporary, and I’ll be damned if the idea of “sugar coated bullets” has not found its way back into the Chinese press with regard to the Western-style internet.

If Hillary Clinton had spent five years in graduate school understanding Chairman Mao instead of trying to figure out the Arkansas education system or how to practice law, we might be only slightly better off for it. But our Secretary of State has of late become irate with Persian lock-step, and now her denizens seek to storm over metaphorical Embassy walls and clamber up Iranian flagpoles, teeth bristling with matchsticks to be struck against brick. Blood rolls in the mouths of rollback berzerkers, sensing that the “three red flags” behind party walls in Beijing are next, necessitating wild alliances between Washingon and Epoch Times. And although no shout-outs have been issued, you’ve got to be certain that China noticed an uptick in SecState budgetary discretion, that American manifest destiny to transform the world was only in abeyance in the ’08 campaign, that “strategic communications” to encourage democracy (in other hemispheres, that is) have seen growth…

Thus to blast-off with stories would ruin the emporiums of wisdom accepted which I’ve taken by default, the John Galt of whosits and whatsthats deafened by chants of “Who Dat?” as if somehow vocal cords could rebuild a seawall and make China democratic.

Therefore suggest a White House trifecta of Golden Robes: Obama, and Merkel, and the Dalai Lama all sniffing for the cloven feet of the wrongful chosen one, smashing down a coup de poing on the dark maple desk and toppling decorative plates to suggest that false Lamas in Lhasa will tumble out once Tibet’s borders are decided upon. Raking up oil spills named after ex-secretaries, something gets recorded, reordered, a not-so-nimble resurgence of orderliness amid the scrum for a ticket to the future.

Thus endeth the prelude, and with no comment I offer these works rendered by scribes lesser than Hemingway’s war reportage, but more nimble than Xinhua’s sticks swizzling lugubrious in RMB and tar sands:

Unit 731 Museum in Pingfang, suburban Harbin -- this facility represents just a fraction of the immense former compound for Japanese biological weapons research -- via Huanqiu

5. Yanbian News has put out a truly excellent article on beggars of all varieties in Yanji city. Some refuse help from social agencies, making up to 5000 yuan per month. But others, as the paper reports, are 11-year old boys trafficked to Yanji. I haven’t the time to do a detailed translation of this piece, but it is one of the best articles I have seen on a segment of Chinese society that, absent recollections of its prevalence during the Guomindang period, has been reported upon less that it deserves: